


This thing you call love, she smiles way too much - (I'm down to your last cigarette)

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6209428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaw says, "I don't do friends. Or feelings, actually." Irony loves opportunities like that. Sorry, Sam, better luck next time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This thing you call love, she smiles way too much - (I'm down to your last cigarette)

Back when they were new to the Agency, before the betrayal and artificial intelligence's and government-sanctioned murder-as-clean up, Shaw says, "I don't do friends. Or feelings, actually." Irony loves opportunities like that. Sorry, Sam, better luck next time.

The day Hersh assigns them as partners he's downright jovial. He rubs his hands together over the paperwork and says "You deserve each other, get the fuck out of my office so we can all keep pretending I don't keep an entire Goddamn bar in the bottom drawer of my desk."

Cole is a very earnest, very well-intentioned man. Shaw is a highly efficient professional woman. They've blown up a building by dinner time. Not their fault. Ask the mission report.

*

"So what's your story?" she asks, tromping through knee-deep snow with his voice in her ear and a gun on her back. "Tragic past? Is your family dead? Was it your fault?"

"I never got to go to Space Camp," he says. "I am an empty shell of potential. How about you?"

She can't feel her fingers. "My parents never let me have a dog."

"That's rough."

"Damn straight. Ok, I think I see our guy."

*

The woman is sitting on the floor of the garage, the man's head resting in her lap, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Shaw thinks if he isn't dead, he's looking at TBI for sure. The woman is crying messily.

"Can you just draw us a map of the route your sister would've taken?" Shaw asks. "We really don't have time to get lost in six hundred acres of 'we swear the bears are more scared of you' rural fucking nowhere. also, your sister's got enough explosives to destroy a small town. Hamlet? What the fuck do you call this, anyway? Do the tumbleweeds get counted in the census?"

The woman stares at her like she's just punched her in the face, and then she starts crying even harder. Shaw glances over at Cole, but he's climbed half way into a storage bin, trying to wrestle something very large and very sharp from under a pile of paint cans.

"Or... we could just ask the bears," Shaw grumbles.

Later, when they're outside and fighting an army of mosquitos, Shaw says "I'm surprised you didn't jump in back there. That's usually people's cue to do the awkward laugh and damage control combo."

Cole blinks, looking honestly surprised. "Did you _want_ me to step in?" he asks.

No one has asked Shaw this question before. She only realizes how fucked up that is when she starts to think about it.

*

In Moscow a car crashes into oncoming traffic because Shaw shoots the driver in the back of the head. It hits a pedestrian and leaves a little kid frozen on the sidewalk, staring in horror and incomprehension. Cole looks like he's gonna cry.

"Come on," Shaw says, voice hard. "We need to go. I'll give you some vodka and a hug later."

*

In Ottawa Shaw spends twenty-four hours cooped up in a hotel room while Cole hacks CSIS. She paces a proverbial hole in the carpet, works out until she's exhausted, cleans each of her guns twice.

"For fucks sake, didn't the Marines teach patience?" he asks, finally. "There is literally nothing else we can do that we're not doing. Lay down. Watch some TV. Rest so that when it's your turn to kick some ass you're up for it."

*

Shaw can count the number of times she's prayed since she turns six on one hand. Can count the number of times after med school on one finger. She can't explain what pushes her to do it, doesn't know how to classify the low ache in her throat or the dull lethargy in her whole body, or the way she feels like being alone is too cold. Cole passes by the open door of her room a couple times during, but he doesn't say anything.

The next morning they sit at the kitchen table of the safe house and eat soggy McDonalds pancakes out of cardboard trays and discuss the best way to torture a man for information. He never brings it up. Shaw doesn't even feel the need to be grateful. She already knew he wouldn't.

*

They share a bed on missions and in cold cities and in tents with leaky roofs and eventually, Shaw says "Would you feel weird if I mentioned that we could fuck sometime?"

Cole rolls over on his back, throwing an arm over his face. "You know, I wouldn't?" he says, muffled and resigned. "We've reached a very special level of friendship, congratulations. Please go the fuck to sleep, you've been awake since Tuesday. Also I'm busy having an ethical crisis about tomorrow, let me angst in peace."

Shaw huffs. A drop of water lands on the tip of her nose. "Good talk."

*

"My mother just asked how you are," Shaw says. "This means I have to kill you now, sorry."

Cole doesn't even look up from his computer. "My parents have been asking about you for months. You may or may not be getting a Christmas sweater."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she says, flatly.

"My family think I'm an FBI software analyst, by the way, so if they ever ask please pretend you know how to defrag a hard drive, at the very least."

"My mother thinks I'm still a Marine. So, you know, if you're ever in a situation where you might meet her, just... don't."

"You say the sweetest things."

*

After everything, Shaw spends three weeks in the patch of bushes outside Cole's parents' house. They look nice. She thinks maybe it would have been ok, getting that sweater. Being alone is cold.


End file.
